Category Archives: halloween

Last Friday we kicked off our Halloween festivities with a little Halloween party we hosted at home. As I mentioned before, we did it for the first time last year {you can see our party featured in WeeWestchester here} and it was so much fun, we wanted to do it again. And after this second time we now know it’s going to be a family tradition. It was complete chaos, with kids, ages 3 months to 9 years old, running around but so much fun. Head over to mamemima to check it out.

Next day, L had a Halloween birthday party and later we had planned to go to our town’s annual Halloween parade. The plan was that M and G walked to town, and then L and I would meet them there to watch the parade and return home together. Well, L and I never made it to the parade!

There were some Halloween events going on in the neighboring towns, but I didn’t expect it to be this traffic mayhem. L was disappointed. But we didn’t give up, though. We finally got to our town and met G and M for frozen yogurt.

Sunday morning we took our weekly family walk and pay a visit to the scarecrows at a nearby park. The scarecrows were made by local middle school and high school students so it was a great show of kids creativity.

This week, the Halloween festivities continued. G had a couple of Halloween celebrations yesterday morning and today has a Halloween parade. L was allowed to wear his costume to school and will have a little celebration in his classroom.

Of course today’s highlight will be tonight when we go out trick or treating. L is very excited and has been training G to say “tik or trit”. So cute!

I have to say it’s been a great Halloween 2013 and I can honestly say that I definitely enjoy Halloween more since I had kids. Really.

Just some pictures of our Halloween decor this year. This year I kept the festive decor to the entry hall and dining room. I re-used most of last year decorations. They were in good shape and I didn’t have time to make new things. I think it worked and everything looks completely different.

{ card stock bats }

I love our card stock bats. It was such an easy project yet makes a big impact. Last year our friends the bats visited us in our dining room and gallery wall {you can see them here}. These year they migrated to the hall. The sweetest thing was the next morning after putting these little guys up {I did it at night while the boys were sleeping}. L and G were coming down the stairs when I heard L say “Look G, bats” and G responded “Wow, bats! Cool”. So cute! { halloween gallery art }

What an easy way to decorate for this occasion with a Halloween gallery art. No, I didn’t make nor print new Halloween art or photos. I just re-used my last year Halloween printables and some Halloween scrap booking paper I got on sale. And I didn’t take the frames down and switch photos/pictures {who has the time!}. No, I just taped them on top of the glass with painters tape. To disguise my lazy approach I added some white web around. The final touch, twisting the frames. Last year Spider Web art ended here, too.

{ halloween pennant }

I used the “BOO” signs from last year’s party {you can see it here} to make a new Halloween pennant. I added a back layer {spider web paper trays I got at the Christmas Store last year} to make it a little more interesting. I completed the look with a few things I had around. L carved a pumpkin last weekend at a local Fall festival. I’m honestly not a big fan of real pumpkins, but I had to include it in our decor since my boy made it. I also repeated last year stripped candle project, this time with skinny, tall candles.

We’re having a little Halloween party for some family and friends tomorrow so I still have more decorating to do!

Yesterday Susan from Oh my! creative featured our one and only 2013 Halloween project. I’m really flattered she picked my Spooky Door Knockers among so many other amazing ideas.

Head over there and check out all the amazing and creative crafts. Sometimes I find it mind-blowing how many imaginative, artistic, talented people are out there. Really, I wish my days had extra hours just to browse away and navigate through some much inspiration.

I warn you. Be sure you have time on your hands when you visit her site because you’ll stay glued to your screen. You’ll be inspired. So many ideas, so many projects!

I mentioned in my last post that this year I re-used most of our Halloween decorations, just switching things around a bit and relocating everything. The Halloween wreath and Spider Web art ended up somewhere else in the house, leaving the front doors empty.

I was at the Dollar Store the other day looking for something I could use for the front door, when I saw these spooky plastic door knockers. I immediately remembered this cool project I ran into while browsing some Halloween linky parties last week. Not sure why, but I just grabbed one knocker {the skull} even though we have double entry doors {I guess I thought I was just going to see how it came out first}. Since I couldn’t find a frame I like I picked a mirror, thinking it’d make the project a little more interesting {and it did}.

I gave the mirror frame some coats of white spray paint and used gold for the knocker. I attached the plastic knocker to the mirror with super glue and used command hooks to hang it on the door. I liked the result so I went back to the store to get another skull door knocker. Of course they didn’t have any more. I grabbed a mummy instead. Ideally they’d match but whatever. I still like them.

I like this little project a lot. It’s a good alternative to the classic “front door wreath”. I like wreaths, too, but sometimes it’s nice to think outside the box and do something more original and unique. You can use different frame types and sizes, different backgrounds {fabric, paper, etc}. The possibilities are endless.

The whole project cost $4 dollars and took me about half hour to make. You can’t beat that, right?

Last year I did a mini series about chic Halloween decor on a budget and shared a few projects I did to decorate our home for this spooky holiday. Most of the decorations were still in good shape so it made sense just to re-use them again this year instead of making new stuff. I didn’t, however, want to display the decorations the same way I did last year. So I recycled and updated them a little and changed their place.

I figured to get into Halloween mood and before sharing my new re-purposed and recycled Halloween decorations and because I haven’t taken pictures yet, I’d make a little recap of my favorite projects from last year.

I didn’t get to post about these newspaper fans and Halloween garland last year. I made them to hang from our TV in the living room. For the garland I threaded three different Halloween cut outs {pumpkin, bat & skull} I found at the Dollar Store combined with black, orange and white card stock circles with orange twine. For the paper fans I used some sheets of newspaper and black and orange card stock circles. Here’s a cool tutorial for making paper fans if you need one.

{ card stock bats }

This was one of the easiest projects we made last year. And I said “we” because L helped by cutting the bat silhouettes. I got the idea from Made but the original idea is from Country Living. They even have Halloween templates you can download here.

Hope you like these little projects and maybe try some of them. Stay tuned for a new quick, easy and extremely budget friendly Halloween project!

Ok, this is going to be a long post rant. First of all, I made it! I posted my October desktop calendar on the first of the month live! It may sound silly but it means a lot to me.
Second I decided to keep this blog, house 36, in WordPress. I know, it’s not the most smart thing to do, switching platforms. But I kept receiving comments and a couple of followers on WordPress and I was not replying to those comments because I was not checking that blog anymore. I probably should have closed my WordPress blog, but it was linked to from other sites and from features I got so I left it live. Since I haven’t posted much since the beginning of the year on the new Blogger account, I decided to transfer my recent posts from Blogger to WordPress so I can have everything in one place. I spent about hour and a half of my Sunday night, transferring my newer post onto WordPress manually. It sounds silly and makes no sense, but being the anal and type A person I am, when I got an idea in my head I just have to do it. So now, everything is back on WordPress and I’ll keep blogging here. Well, if you can call blogging my sporadic posting.

September was busy. What’s new, right? I couldn’t do my monthly balance even though I started it and it stayed in the drafts folders unfinished. One thing here, another one there, or maybe it’s because I’m not a writer and can’t really start and finish a post in an hour like most bloggers do. But I guess that’s OK because I’m not a writer, just a woman, wife, mom, designer, trying to document parts of our life, from family adventures to home remodel projects. Also English is not my first language and as I mentioned before, I used to wait for M to proof read my posts before hitting “publish”. Until I decided it was ok to make mistakes. However I’m still not very confident to just publish so posts stay in my draft folder for days, weeks, etc. I thought about writing in Spanish, but my goal to write in English was to improve my skill in the language so I think I’ll stick to it.

Ok, rant over. So now about the fun stuff. On the house front we have so many projects lined up. I doubt they will happen this month but we have started to plan and schedule things, have even drawn sketches and got bids but I’ll write about that on a separate post.

Finally how can I not mention this month favorite holiday? Halloween! Last year our Halloween party was so much fun that we’ve decided to do it again this year. We also plan on going on some traditional season activities like apple and pumpkin picking, corn mazes, Halloween parades and much more. Welcome October!

Remember my Halloween wreath? Well, in all my excitement for finishing my first Halloween project I didn’t consider how it would hold up on our front door. We don’t have a covered porch, just an overhang. Silly me, I thought that’d be enough to protect it from the rain. Well, it wasn’t. Next day it was hung I looked at it and it was already a little wet. And it didn’t even rain that night!

Obviously it was not going to resist real rain. So I brought it inside the house and I was left with an empty front door again. I thought about making another wreath, this time of fabric, but wasn’t very convinced so I put aside the idea while I worked on L’s Halloween costume. I have to sew pants for his costume and I needed a tutorial. I’ve never sewn pants before {or any piece of clothing for that matter. Do bow ties count?} so I headed to Made, one of my favorite blogs to find sewing tutorials. While browsing I saw this spider web art project. I happened to have an empty frame that I already painted all white for another project. So this was perfect!

I really took me about 20 minutes to make the web. I added the rest of the glitter spiders I used for the wreath. After seeing the finished product I wanted to paint the frame orange since I think the contrast would have looked nicer but never got to it. To hang the frame I added a piece of grey ribbon I had but, now looking at the pictures I don’t like it much. Maybe some orange ribbon?

This was another easy, simple and very budget-friendly Halloween craft. I still have a couple more DIY Halloween projects to share so come back soon.

This project couldn’t be simpler. I had white candles. I had black electrical tape.

I like how the candles look a little more sophisticated. And they can stay like that all year round, not just for Halloween. Orange candles will work better for Halloween, but I only had white candles {I forgot to take pictures of the candles in the dining room}. I’m not planning on lighting the candles so this is more just a decorative thing.

I collect frames. I have many in different sizes and colors. And I wanted to use some of them with some Halloween related prints.

I printed a couple of images, a skull and a spider, I found on the web. And I edited a school drawing L did last year. I just changed the blue background for an orange one. I wrapped some of my decor books with newspaper so they can be more in tune with the decor. But as you can see I haven’t finished.

I still wanted to add something more typographic, so inspired by this print from Jess LC {love her blog!}, I created my Halloween versions. They are not perfect but they look nice.

I also printed a couple of pictures of last year’s Halloween {the boys in their costumes}. I think this will be a nice tradition every year.

It was a simple, easy and cheap way to add some Halloween spirit to the house, in addition to my other Halloween DIY projects.